Hardcore League Season One - Final Standings and the After Party!

[Cordovan]

UPDATE 12/10/19: The Hardcore League server has reopened for additional character transfers and other after party activity through January 5th. Once the Hardcore League server is closed after January 5th, the server will not reopen until Season Two, at which point there will be a character database purge. Make sure to get your stuff done before January 6th!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our first Hardcore League! We've now published the final standings for Reaper XP and Total Favor here. Congratulations to everyone on the list! This list will be published in the Hall of Heroes in the future as well.

There were more than 6,000 characters who made it to at least level 5 and survived, so next week's DDO Chronicle will be a special edition featuring everyone who survived at 5+.

We are also pleased to announce that the after party has begun! We have now re-opened the Hardcore League server for players to get their things in order and transfer their character to another server. Make sure to read our FAQ here to get more information about the Character Transfer process.

Character transfers from the Hardcore League to another live server can be done through the regular DDO game launcher. The timing is this: We will be keeping the Hardcore League server open through December 2nd, after which time the Hardcore server will close for a while pending some wider server work we are planning. Once that server work is complete, we will work to get character copies re-enabled for both the Hardcore League and the other servers as well. It is not expected that Character Transfers will be re-enabled following December 2nd until probably early next year.

Taking part and watching this first Hardcore League has been great, and we hope you've had a good time too. Stay tuned for more information about Season Two of the Hardcore League in early 2020!

[GoldyGopher]

Stay tuned for more information about Season Two of the Hardcore League in early 2020!

I believe that early 2020 is too soon.

[ShifterThePirate]

I believe that early 2020 is too soon.

He says there will be information about season 2 early 2020 and not season 2 starting at that time. It's probably just an announcement about when we will see it again in the future. My best guess is around the anniversary event though.

I would love to see some more stats though. What classes did the best or which died the most. What builds were at the top or most used.

[Silverleafeon]

He says there will be information about season 2 early 2020 and not season 2 starting at that time. It's probably just an announcement about when we will see it again in the future.

Likely.

It would be nice if the next Hardcore League were moved to avoid any other main event, such as:

Aniversary
Night Revels
Winter Games
Etc

Hence the next HCL season 2 might occur in less than a year to avoid Night Revels.

[Silverleafeon]

Transferred

That was easy, thanks.
(I did presort my inventory.)

[rarothrock]

I believe that early 2020 is too soon.

I agree wholeheartedly.
Ratyr

[Afrosaxon]

I can't seem to log into my characters in the land of lost souls. They're all stuck in loading screen, eventually it times out and says connection to server lost. I was able to successfully log into my last "living" character.

[YUGWEN]

I heard a lot of people on the HC server and forums complaining about player density on the other servers. I don't get that at all. Player density and participation has been dropping for a long time. The increase in level cap means that even if the raw number of players was the same as it was when level cap was 20, there are half again as many levels and that ties up a lot of characters in the level 19+ range until they TR again. Quests that used to fill in seconds are now lucky to see one or two join - including raids. The main servers are flooded with multi-TR characters and people who solo everything.

I am not a permadeath or HC fan, but I had a blast on the HC server because it forced people to work together and fill up parties like the good old days. Everyone started with nothing, and no one could really level up high enough to farm low level gear without getting creative because of the level limitations of quests. Teamwork had to become a real thing again and I have had more fun than I have had in years because of it.

My only issue with the event was crossing over other events. I missed out on night revels entirely, and I love that thing. That, the anniversary event, and Crystal Cove are my favorites. I think this was a great event, and I think keeping it exclusive to VIP also helps keep some of the F2P and gen chat spamming drama off of the server. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a new server spin up along with HC changes happen. I think reserving it for paying players is fine.

Good job Devs, thanks for leveling the playing field and mixing things up!

(FePyrite on HC, Yugweno on Khyber)

[Zargarx]

I believe that early 2020 is too soon.

Yeah, early 2020 is fine for an announcement but not to have another hard core league event. But perhaps around the summer?

Also, not sure if others felt this way, I found it was perhaps 1 month too long? I think 60 days would be better. And to further stress the time element, maybe have a countdown timer in the hall of heroes or perhaps an hourly announcement (that can be turned off in the options settings); e.g. There is 35 days and 16 hours remaining.

Last comment - I found it strange to be on a "hardcore" server and having the option to pick lower difficulties. For quests that support Hard (and higher), I would have expected that the lower settings (normal/casual) would have been grayed out or have a snarky comment!

[hit_fido]

Last comment - I found it strange to be on a "hardcore" server and having the option to pick lower difficulties. For quests that support Hard (and higher), I would have expected that the lower settings (normal/casual) would have been grayed out or have a snarky comment!

The enforced permadeath aspect was the core of the event, and still inviting players of whatever skill level to play at a difficulty appropriate for them didn't diminish that or the added excitement. They made the real prestige rewards contingent on playing harder difficulties. To me that was smart, more players could/would participate in the event but the top "skilled" players could still earn whatever recognition motivated them.

[Darsch82]

I believe that early 2020 is too soon.

I don't think it is soon enough. Season should run for four months with new season starting immediately upon end of the last season.

[Sarkastik]

Thank you to everyone who participated in our first Hardcore League! We've now published the final standings for Reaper XP and Total Favor here. Congratulations to everyone on the list! This list will be published in the Hall of Heroes in the future as well.

You're not going to remove the dead characters from the list???

[Kabaon]

Thank you to everyone who participated in our first Hardcore League! We've now published the final standings for Reaper XP and Total Favor here. Congratulations to everyone on the list! This list will be published in the Hall of Heroes in the future as well.

There were more than 6,000 characters who made it to at least level 5 and survived, so next week's DDO Chronicle will be a special edition featuring everyone who survived at 5+.

We are also pleased to announce that the after party has begun! We have now re-opened the Hardcore League server for players to get their things in order and transfer their character to another server. Make sure to read our FAQ here to get more information about the Character Transfer process.

Character transfers from the Hardcore League to another live server can be done through the regular DDO game launcher. The timing is this: We will be keeping the Hardcore League server open through December 2nd, after which time the Hardcore server will close for a while pending some wider server work we are planning. Once that server work is complete, we will work to get character copies re-enabled for both the Hardcore League and the other servers as well. It is not expected that Character Transfers will be re-enabled following December 2nd until probably early next year.

Taking part and watching this first Hardcore League has been great, and we hope you've had a good time too. Stay tuned for more information about Season Two of the Hardcore League in early 2020!

I'm sure you've heard this a bunch already, but PLEASE pass along to the devs that Premium players are interested to. If the server had been altered already to force Perma Death, changing how individuals access quests should be "potentially" possible. By this I mean the players that say Premium players would be left behind because we can't open Elite right away.

Beyond that I dunno, I personally don't care for leaderboard placements or trying to compete with other players, I was intrigued with the idea of starting fresh with no items/gear and just seeing how far I can make it solo/duoing.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'm sure you've heard this a bunch already, but PLEASE pass along to the devs that Premium players are interested to. If the server had been altered already to force Perma Death, changing how individuals access quests should be "potentially" possible. By this I mean the players that say Premium players would be left behind because we can't open Elite right away.

Beyond that I dunno, I personally don't care for leaderboard placements or trying to compete with other players, I was intrigued with the idea of starting fresh with no items/gear and just seeing how far I can make it solo/duoing.

My suggestion for making it open to Premium players would be to let you buy a token on the DDO store for X number of points that lets you create ONE Permadeath character. (Basically, when you finish character creation, you talk to Mortality, and if you're not VIP you have to turn in a token in order to start questing.) Around 500-700 points each seems like a good number to me.

I think this would be on the easy side to implement, and I think that'd be a good option all around.

[Kabaon]

My suggestion for making it open to Premium players would be to let you buy a token on the DDO store for X number of points that lets you create ONE Permadeath character. (Basically, when you finish character creation, you talk to Mortality, and if you're not VIP you have to turn in a token in order to start questing.) Around 500-700 points each seems like a good number to me.

I think this would be on the easy side to implement, and I think that'd be a good option all around.

Not for one character. I refuse to spend 10 dollars an attempt thanks (20 if my wife plays). Not unless all the bugs/lag were fixed before hand so I don't die to some random non-sense. I get that this is something the devs made to make money, and have some fun and try something new with the game. I also know it wasn't an easy decision from the devs to make it ViP only, but as it was a test to see if it was worth doing again I also get why it was stuck behind a paywall.

The reason I don't want to sub is that I'll get VERY little value out of it. I know I've earned my fair share of the content over the years, but aside from Keep on the Borderlands and one of the madness packs (you know the ones with terminal delirium or whatever) I have access to all the content on my account, with all the races unlocked aside from wood elf. My wife is a in a similar situation. I'm very certain that we have purchased enough content to match a good number of years of sub money. Expansions not included in those costs as everyone has to buy them if they want to play the content regardless of account status.

But hey, maybe I'm in the minority as a Premium for paying for as much content as I do on my account. And most premiums aren't in my situation. The devs would have the data and would make a call based off that. But they could also use it as a way to sell content to those players by making everyone able to play on the server, full access, and show that either ViP is worth it, or that some packs are really fun and those players purchase the pack on live servers. But I'm just throwing ideas out there.

[Fedora1]

The reason I don't want to sub is that I'll get VERY little value out of it. I know I've earned my fair share of the content over the years, but aside from Keep on the Borderlands and one of the madness packs (you know the ones with terminal delirium or whatever) I have access to all the content on my account, with all the races unlocked aside from wood elf. My wife is a in a similar situation. I'm very certain that we have purchased enough content to match a good number of years of sub money. Expansions not included in those costs as everyone has to buy them if they want to play the content regardless of account status.

One thing to keep in mind that you won't have on the HC server if you are not VIP is the ability to open your first quests on elite. You won't already have a third life toon to do it, and this could potentially handicap you being able to get the xp/favor/reaper rewards because you would have to run the quests 3 times. Obviously not an issue if you're into pug'ing, but beware there were "some" instances of player griefing where 4-5 players would intentionally get other member(s) of the party killed. It wasn't widespread, but it did happen.

[KingKoz]

My suggestion for making it open to Premium players would be to let you buy a token on the DDO store for X number of points that lets you create ONE Permadeath character. (Basically, when you finish character creation, you talk to Mortality, and if you're not VIP you have to turn in a token in order to start questing.) Around 500-700 points each seems like a good number to me.

I think this would be on the easy side to implement, and I think that'd be a good option all around.

OR, just pay the $15 for VIP.

[Lilgrunt1977]

I'm sure you've heard this a bunch already, but PLEASE pass along to the devs that Premium players are interested to. If the server had been altered already to force Perma Death, changing how individuals access quests should be "potentially" possible. By this I mean the players that say Premium players would be left behind because we can't open Elite right away.

Beyond that I dunno, I personally don't care for leaderboard placements or trying to compete with other players, I was intrigued with the idea of starting fresh with no items/gear and just seeing how far I can make it solo/duoing.

Let them think that only VIP's are the top notch players. It's ok. Have your day in the Sun and bask in your fake glory. When the Hardcore Server opens up to Premium Players and you still make it to the top of the Leader Boards...then and only then....can you call yourself a Champion.

[Kabaon]

Let them think that only VIP's are the top notch players. It's ok. Have your day in the Sun and bask in your fake glory. When the Hardcore Server opens up to Premium Players and you still make it to the top of the Leader Boards...then and only then....can you call yourself a Champion.

Heh, still wouldn't care for the leaderboards, I just want to have a new perspective on the game. But thanks for the words of encouragement

[ChadB123]

Season Two of the Hardcore League in early 2020!

This is insane. The population of the Orien server was pitiful during the Hardcore League. This is a terrible decision, and I hope the devs reconsider it.

EDIT: Misread the OP. However, I do hope population is considered before announcing season 2.